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Today i read a study that compared gifted kids to kids on the autism spectrum. ??? is what you are thinking, right? me, too.

Yet it was rather interesting. Kids on the spectrum have Sensory Integration problems just like gifted kids. It is thought that the back of the brain, which brings in the sensory information, is firing rapidly and very developed in these kids. But their frontal lobe, which is not fully developed, cannot process the high levels of information that comes in. In gifted kids, this means they present with anxiety, OCD, mood swings, tantrums, crying, confusion. It leads to diagnosis like, Asperger’s, OCD, ADHD, and Bipolar. However, these kids DO NOT have these conditions. Their personalities just appear like these conditions. Hundreds of gifted kids are misdiagnosed every year. It is great that doctors now know to look for these conditions, but there isn’t enough education and information to also look for giftedness FIRST. Many kids are diagnosed as twice exceptional and they are not. We have to get the education out there to parents that their children may be gifted and not actually have ADHD or OCD, etc. The worst situation would be do give these gifted kids medications for conditions they don’t actually have. These medications could seriously harm their growing brains.

So now that these parents know, what do they do to cope with their kids emotional needs? You don’t need to medicate, because your child does not have a mental disorder!

Here are things that have worked for us:

1) recognize this is part of their personality and not a disorder

2) be around whenever they need to talk or cry, don’t punish them for the breakdowns they have

3) help teach them to calm themselves so they don’t get out of control (antianxiety mechanisms can include breathing, imaginative stories like zipping out the world, etc.)

4) avoid the environments that upset their senses (loud lunchrooms, noisy classrooms, loud halls, parties), if they can’t be avoided teach your child how to find a quiet area to unwind and decompress

5) magnesium salts – i say it all the time, but these are the best!!! 2 cups in the bath at night or put in a spray bottle and spray your child’s back and arms every day

6) raw vegetables – spinach, carrots, beans

7) NO sugars, dyes, or preservatives of any kind – they always bring on an attack and if your child gets snacks at school, make sure those are also free from sugars and preservatives

8) yoghurt every day

9) get your child checked for gluten allergies

10) lots of sleep , this is the time for the brain to decompress and it needs it

11) get your child involved with other gifted children through your school district’s gifted coordinator Hope these were helpful!!

I decided to write today because of the overwhelming feelings I have had this last year.  Today, I feel i am finally coming out the other end and although i know the days will be hard, i can manage.  i want to write about this last year and talk about our coping mechanisms as a family.  i hope i can help any of my friends or even strangers that are dealing with the same issues.

Last year, my daughter started kindergarten.  She has always been an emotional child and a precocious child.  We were all excited to start a new chapter in our life, we had no idea what was about to enfold.  From the start, my daughter cried when we brought her to school and cried when we picked her up.  Now she had previously had 2 years of preschool and we had no problem with anxiety then.  We met with her teacher and were told she has high anxiety in the classroom and that she tested at a fifth grade level for reading and third for math.  So my husband and i thought, she’s bored.  We presented the teacher with some “exciting” work for her to do at school and it seemed the teacher was offended.  We tried to be accepting of the teacher’s place while at the same time pushing for our daughter’s academics.  We wish now we had not been so interested in not hurting the teacher’s feelings. 

The problems worsened and my daughter developed OCD like tendencies.  She also would start crying and appear emotionally unhinged at the weirdest times.  She started making up elaborate games and repetitive questions.  Her teacher started complaining.   We decided to take her to testing for giftedness.  This involves an IQ  test.  We felt with this info we could push for our daughter to get a better fit at school.  Our daughter tested high, very high on the IQ test and we sighed.  We had found the answer.  WRONG!!!!

We went to the school armed with our proof.  We were told there was no funding for the gifted program and our daughter.  We pushed hard for different academics and books for our daughter.  We got NOTHING!  After school one day, my daughter was with a group of kids and a fifth grader teased her about being able to read at a fifth grade level.  After overhearing this, i asked my daughter if she had told anyone this.  She said no.  I went to her teacher and was told that a parent had been caught looking in my daughter’s file and obviously spread it around school. 

Why wasn’t i told?  What else was going on at this school?  After talking with a therapist she suggested we try some new ideas.  They did not go over well with the teacher.  She said she did not have the time to do these things with my daughter.  After many agonizing discussions with my husband, together we decided to remove my daughter from the school and homeschool her until we found an appropriate school.  We started our search.

We learned many things on our search for the right school.  First. we talked with the terapist.  She helped us work out a strategy for settling our daughter and decompressing her from the environment she had been in for four months.  Then she helped us with a partial diagnosis of Sensory Integration Disorder.  Armed with these, we now knew what kind of school our daughter needed.  One that could meet her needs.

We toured eight schools in our district. We are lucky to have many charter schools that can provide a core knowledge curriculum and accelerated classes.  We found a school two months later and visited it four times before enrolling our daughter.  It is now a year later and we are happy to say:

We have survived the first year! We now progress day by day and try not to worry too much.  But here are some things that have helped:

1) accelerated classes to match her thirst for knowledge (she skipped a grade and this school provides cluster grouping across the WHOLE school so she can go into the other grades for reading and math)

2) the sensory integration diagnosis – because now we know what to work on and what to avoid to avoid the anxiety and ocd

3) magnesium bath salts – they work wonders on her nerves

4) no sugar, preservatives, dyes, etc. – pure raw food if we can get it – we see the difference immediately is she has had any of these (rages, crying, ocd)

5) calm environment at school – no loud lunchrooms or disruptive classrooms (this is a must for her to feel safe at school, it equals zero anxiety about going to school in the morning)

6) at least twice a week, an activity that is thoroughly exhausting for her to do and makes her use her balancing (this is from the occupational therapist she WAS seeing, she no longer needs her!)  some activities include: swimming, biking, skating, jumpy houses, swinging, climbing (apparently this makes them use the brains stem and by using your brains stem, it helps coordinate all the areas of the brain so you have less excess stimulation

We are so happy that our daughter is now progressing well.  The OCD symptoms are completely gone, the anxiety is very slight, and she is actually a happy, laughing child. We know we have many worries ahead of us, like what do we do when she has exhausted the grade levels at this school.  But we want to say thank you to all the people who have opened our eyes and helped our daughter.  Thank you to the gifted coordinator of our district, thank you to her current teachers, thank you to her school, thank you to her therapist and thank you to her occupational therapist!